The Survivor eBook

eyes which amazed him. Gideon Strong went his
way unseeing, stern, and unbending as ever even to
his younger daughter, but in those days there was thunder
always in the air. Douglas remembered the sensation
and shuddered. Once he had come across Joan and
her sister together suddenly, and had found it hard
work to keep from a shriek of terror. There was
a light in Joan’s eyes—­it seemed
to him that he had seen it there often lately.
Was there another Joan whom he did not know?

He walked on, grim, pale, chilled. The time when
he would lie awake in his little oak-beamed chamber
and thoughts of Cicely would soothe him to sleep with
pleasant fancies was gone. He thought of her now
without emotion—­no longer the memory of
those walks thrilled his pulses. He knew very
well that never again would his heart beat the quicker
for her coming, never again, even though the memory
of that terrible night could be swept away, would
her coming bring joy to him. Firmly though his
feet were planted upon the ladder, it seemed to him
then in that gloomy mood that every step must take
him further away from any chance of that wonderful
happiness, so intangible, yet so sweet an adjunct to
life. For he was following like a doomed creature
in the wake of Drexley, and Rice, and those others.
Too late had come his warning. The woman of whom
he never dared to think was surely a sorceress.
She was only a woman—­scarcely even beautiful,
yet the world of her sex had become to Douglas Guest
as a thing that was not. He turned at last back
into the Strand. He would go to his rooms and
work for a while. But as he walked slowly down,
jostled by many passers-by, still not wholly detached
from that phantasmal past, there came upon him a shock
so sudden and so overwhelming that the very pavement
seemed to yawn at his feet. Towards him two women
were slowly walking, holding their own in the press
of the crowd, one with horrified eyes already fastened
upon him, the other as yet unconscious of his presence.
Nearer and nearer they came, and although every impulse
of his body bade him fly, his limbs were rigid and
every muscle seemed frozen. For the women were
Joan and her sister Cicely.

CHAPTER XX

CICELY ASKS A QUESTION

After all, it was the woman who sought him who passed
him by, her unwilling companion who recognised him
at once, in spite of his altered dress and bearing.
They were swallowed up in the crowd before Douglas
had recovered himself. Something in Cicely’s
terrified gaze had instantly checked his first instinct
which prompted him to accost them. They were
gone, leaving him alike speechless and bewildered.
He staggered into a small restaurant, and sitting
at an unoccupied table, called for a bottle of wine.